


The Morning After

by Kaza999



Series: Clear Skies [5]
Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: F/M, basically everything about any sp au is that it's generally miserable as all get out, clear skies au, look side characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-02
Updated: 2013-10-02
Packaged: 2017-12-28 06:03:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/988578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaza999/pseuds/Kaza999
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day after Stephanie is expelled from school is a bright and sunny one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Morning After

**Author's Note:**

> So here we focus on Des and Melissa just after Steph has decided to run away from home. I sort of based the Clear Skies Edgely family dynamics on the family dynamics of an earlier draft of the first book, when Val/Steph has no reflection and her relationship with her parents is much worse.

The day that Stephanie ran away dawned bright and sunny, a stark contrast to the sleet they had had the previous night. 

Desmond woke up before Melissa did, to start breakfast. Normally he wouldn't have had the time, as it was a Wednesday today, but he was taking the day off from work. Melissa was doing the same, but she deigned to stay in bed longer. She waited until she could hear the tea kettle whistling to get up. She pulled on her dressing gown and walked downstairs, pausing at Stephanie's door but not knocking on it.

She didn't want to have another fight with Stephanie right now. It could wait. After all, since she'd just been expelled, the girl had nothing but time, and there would be plenty of opportunities for fighting in the future. Melissa disregarded how quiet Stephanie's room was, instead electing to move on and pretend that everything would be all right for the moment. 

She got to the kitchen and sat down at the table. She ran a hand over her face, feeling exhausted and a little shellshocked. Desmond wasn't very talkative for once, looking downcast as he cooked. 

“How are you doing?” he asked her, handing her a cup of tea, which she gratefully accepted. His eyes were tired, the shadows under them indicating he'd slept about as well as she had. Which was to say, not well in the slightest. 

She looked up at him. “How do you think I'm doing?” she sighed deeply and took a sip from her cup. Desmond always knew exactly how she liked her tea, and the familiarity calmed her a bit. 

He heaved a sigh as well and sat down next to her. “What are we going to do about this?” he said. 

She shrugged. She didn't know either.

Melissa supposed they would have to get Stephanie enrolled in another school. It was late in the year, but her grades were decent and this was just her first expulsion. Never mind, of course, the fact that she had a pretty poor record apart from her grades, but Melissa guessed that there was some way to work that out. She wasn't sure, she had never had to enroll Stephanie into a school this way before. 

It wasn't really the expulsion that was the issue. Yes, granted, it was a pretty serious issue—it was harder than you would think to get yourself expelled, but Stephanie had managed it anyway. No, the real problem in Melissa's mind was that the expulsion was just a symptom of much larger problems. 

Stephanie had recently started getting into trouble for fighting at school. She'd broken several noses, blackened many eyes, and on one memorable occasion, sent a boy to the hospital with a broken arm. Melissa and Desmond had been speaking to both her and her teachers about her behavior, but nothing had really been getting better. Stephanie maintained that the fights were all in self-defense, and her teachers maintained that she picked them on purpose, and this caused many and numerous conflicts, but none that had been expulsion-worthy. 

Then Stephanie had started fighting with her teachers themselves. Where once they had been worried because Stephanie so seldom spoke at all, now she would get into screaming matches with them in the middle of class. Fighting with other students was one thing, but arguments with teachers were completely different, and Desmond and Melissa had been totally unsure how to deal with it. 

Everything had culminated with Stephanie threatening a teacher with bodily harm, and then doing the same thing to the school principal when called into the main office. By the time Melissa and Desmond arrived to bring her home, she was halfway to getting herself arrested. She had terrified one of the receptionists, who was convinced she was having some kind of psychotic break. 

That was probably the last straw, to be honest. 

Neither Melissa nor Desmond understood what had happened to their daughter. Ever since she had become a teenager, she'd been quiet and grim, but they had put that to her being a teenage girl. After all, her grades hadn't suffered, and before this year, they hadn't gotten many complaints from her school. If she were depressed or there was another problem, surely there would be other signs. 

The fighting hadn't exactly come out of nowhere. Stephanie had always been an angry girl, but she had also always had a lid on her anger. When she was younger, the only reason she would hurt someone was if she felt threatened first. 

The fighting with boys made Melissa worried about her daughter's safety because of this. However, every time she brought the subject up with Stephanie, Stephanie had told her to drop it. She always told her parents that she was fine, it was just that the boy in question always had it coming.

“I'm going to go check on her,” Desmond decided, bringing Melissa out of her reverie. “Keep an eye on the eggs for me, will you?”

Melissa nodded absently and stood up from the table, going over to the stove while Desmond headed upstairs. After a minute, he came back down, his face white as a sheet, clutching a piece of paper in his hand.

“Desmond?” Melissa said, brow furrowing. “What's wrong?”

He held up the paper. “She's gone,” he said, voice trembling. “She left.”

“ _Left?_ ” Melissa said blankly. "What do you mean, she left?"

Desmond continued to hold out the paper to her, and Melissa snatched it. It was a note.

_I'm sorry about this. I'm sorry about everything that's happened. Don't worry about me, I'll be fine.  
-Stephanie_

Melissa dropped her teacup, and it shattered on the ground, sending sharp pieces and hot tea flying everywhere. Neither she nor Desmond moved to pick up the mess.

She locked eyes with her husband. "What do we do about this?" she said, almost in a whisper. All Desmond could do was shake his head.

Outside, the sun continued to shine.


End file.
